Critically Endangered
Saola
Pseudoryx nghetinhensis
The Saola is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, being heavily threatened by snares intended to trap other animals within their forest habitat and to a lesser extent by habitat destruction, with an estimated population of 50–300 individuals as of 2015.
Appearance
The general characteristics of the Saola, as shown by studies during 1993–5 as well as the 1998 study, include a chocolate brown coat with patches of white on the face, throat and the sides of the neck, a paler shade of brown on the neck and the belly, a black dorsal stripe, and a pair of nearly parallel horns, present on both sexes. The neck and the belly are a paler shade of brown compared to the rest of the body. The tail, that measured 23 cm (9.1 in) in Robichaud's specimen, is divided into three horizontal bands, brown at the base, black at the tip and white in the middle.
Robichaud noted the height of the female as 84 cm (33 in) at the shoulder. The back was slightly elevated, nearly 12 cm (4.7 in) taller than the shoulder height. The head-and-body length was recorded as 150 cm (59 in).
It was first described in 1993 following a discovery of remains in Vũ Quang National Park by a joint survey of the Vietnamese Ministry of Forestry and the World Wide Fund for Nature, Saolas have since been kept in captivity multiple times, although only for short periods as they died within a matter of weeks to months.
Range and habitat
The Saola has one of the smallest ranges of any large mammal. It inhabits wet evergreen or deciduous forests in eastern Southeast Asia, preferring river valleys. Sightings have been reported from steep river valleys at 300–1,800 m (980–5,910 ft) above sea level.
Commercial logging has been stopped in the nature reserve area of Bu Huong, and there is an official ban on forest clearance within the boundaries of the reserve.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Even though apparently solitary, Saola have been reported in groups of two or three as well as up to six or seven.
In crisis
Saola live in restricted areas of high-altitude wet evergreen forest and have probably always had a relatively low population density. The Saola is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, being heavily threatened by snares intended to trap other animals within their forest habitat and to a lesser extent by habitat destruction, with an estimated population of 50–300 individuals as of 2015. There is concern that the species may already be extinct, and even if individuals are still alive, extinction has been described as "inevitable" within 10 years from 2025 without intervention.
The Saola is currently considered to be critically endangered. Unfortunately, because it is unlikely that intact Saola populations exist, field surveys to discover these populations are not a conservation priority.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Saola is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Saola, Wikidata item Q218792. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
